Bahman Ghobadi: The Poetics of Politics Kurdiscinema.com / 16 May 2007 By Felix Koch / February 2007 (Published by mono.kultur) “By the age of seventeen, I had seen two wars, one revolution and a lot of my close friends and relatives killed.” Little known in the West, Kurdish director Bahman Ghobadi has proven himself, with a few short and feature films, to be one of the most impressive filmmakers of our time. In a constant struggle with the difficult circumstances in his home country, Iran, Ghobadi is a restless man, driven to document and portray the fate of the Kurds in Iran as well as in Iraq and to lend his voice to those who do not have the chance to be heard. While his films confront the audience directly with the utter harshness and hopelessness of Kurdish life, he has mastered the art of protecting the viewer through the beauty and poetry of his images. With his stories, Ghobadi asks painful questions, wrapping the devastating answers in overwhelmingly beautiful pictures that render his films a disturbing and yet strangely enchanting experience at the same time. Bahman Ghobadi was born in 1969 in Baneh, a province of Kurdistan in Iran. After earning his B.A. in film directing from the Iranian Broadcasting College, he worked briefly as an industrial photographer before turning to film full-time. His first documentary Life in Fog in 1995 tells the story of a 14-year-old orphan that is forced to quit school and start smuggling goods across the Iran-Iraq border to feed his siblings. In 1999, Ghobadi told a similar story in his international breakthrough as a director with A Time for Drunken Horses, the first Kurdish full feature film in the history of Iranian cinema. By working with lay actors – often children – replaying their real role in life, Ghobadi creates films that oscillate between documentaries and fiction films. He blurred the lines between the two genres even further when he depicted with Turtles Can Fly in 2004 the effects of the American invasion of Iraq on the Kurdish minorities in the countryside by shooting the film within two weeks of the actual fall of Baghdad, setting the story against real-life events.
hope and hopelessness, has gained him a quiet but considerable reputation. His films have been selected for an impressive range of international festivals and awards, including the Camera d'Or Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000 and the Peace Film Award at the Berlinale in 2005. His latest film Half Moon won the Golden Seashell at the 2006 San Sebastian International Film Festival. In Iran, it is banned under the allegation of promoting separatism. ---In the West, you are generally seen as a political filmmaker. In Turtles Can Fly, which is set in the war in Iraq, you also address the special role of foreign and American TV channels. What kind of an image of the media as a global power do you have? "My impression of the influence of the media is as I have shown in that film. I believe there is a global system where all is interconnected. For example, as soon as/when a war is created at a certain place, the media appear at the site quite quickly and convey the news, drawing people to their TV screens. The system creates trouble in a corner of the world at will. What I am saying is that the confluence of these media and that system and that war, they are all interconnected. Everything is quite organized and controlled by a few hands. I have often been critical of the currents that these TV channels pursue." ---Do you consider your films as an opposition to the big media? "I call my films ‘local media’, with local people far from and outside the system, not controlled by the system. I can portray local events in a real and genuine manner, from a completely personal viewpoint and with a tiny budget. There are no games played behind my films, as opposed to what, I believe, exists behind the curtains of the major networks, like the BBC and CNN, where there are powers controlling them. The media are at the service of their policies. The powers start a war and know in advance that the networks should be there to convey the news and how they should portray it. Nowhere in the world is there as much censorship as in these TV channels, in my view. Censorship is most powerful and most prevalent in these big networks." ---In Turtles Can Fly, we have different media audiences such as, for example, the character Satellite, who can understand the news on TV, and others that are unable to decipher foreign television. What is your view of the audience? "I do consider a diverse audience. My films are not directed towards one sector. The comprehension or incomprehension of the media in the film is part of the scenario. In the script, I tackle the topic of media literacy through the character Satellite that you just mentioned, in a kind of situational comedy. I am playing with this character and use the comedy that it provokes to poke fun at these channels." ---In your films, there seems to be a conflict between powerlessness and helplessness on the one side and the desire to make change on the other. You are a very active film director and you don't seem to give up. How do you see the relationship between these two sides? "I live in a part of the world that generally has a quite pessimistic view of the future. However, the pessimism is not so overwhelming as to kill all hope. I do see a spark of hope. This area of the world, the Middle East, is, I believe, the best marketplace for weaponry, and as long as weapons are produced as virtually the main product of countries such as the US, the UK, France, and others, there is a need for a market. I realize, despairingly, that there is a lot of capital in the Middle East for the purchase of weapons. So if you look at things in that way, I and generations before and after me are already condemned in this part of the world. I am not expressing a political viewpoint; this is just a daily reality and most people seem to know this around here. Therefore, what I try to do is to portray the trials, past and present, of my people, my tribe, and to cling on to the last ray of hope, so that I have the breath to carry on living and something with which to make myself happy. I believe that in this part of the world, happiness, the end of the war, is only part-time. It will only be short-lived. War will never ever end in Iran. This game is being played out in our countries – Iran, Afghanistan, and Iraq – every decade or so, at the hands of those that I said control the media." ---Can you see any solution to this situation you just described? What would need to happen for this cycle to be interrupted? "The only solution that I know is for all raw materials and underground resources such as petroleum, natural gas, and other minerals in the region to run out, and for the Middle East to be transformed into a continent such as Africa. That might be the only situation in which there would be no excuse for war." No lamp burns till morning ---You started shooting Turtles Can Fly two weeks after the fall of Baghdad and immediately started pre-production. How were the working conditions for you and how was your relationship with the American authorities?
simultaneously writing the script, finding locations and trying to persuade the American and Kurdish authorities to grant permission for my film – I was trying to convince the Americans to feature in my film. These three months took three years out of my life. However, I had switched on the engine, so to speak, the difficulties became practically unnoticeable. The ambiance in the group was so good and we were living such a reality, with cinema and life becoming one, that I no longer recall any perception of the harshness and the problems." ---The fusion of cinema and life is very present in all of your films. In 1995, you shot the documentary Life in Fog. How important is this genre for your fiction films? "I strongly believe in the documentary genre, it is very important. If you have noticed, in most of my films, I take a story and I present it in a documentary-style frame. I want the acting to be so good, and the environment and the set to be so realistic, that I almost touch documentary cinema with every film that I make. This is where I come from, this is my view of how I should do films." ---Is that also related to the fact that you often use lay actors? "Yes, it is one of the reasons. This is also why I only use them in one film and often not in the following one. But I do refer them to other filmmakers who might want to use them in one of their projects. And to not break their hearts, I tell my lay actors that cinema is something that only happens once. So I prepare them not to get attached to cinema. Most of them are unemployed. Making a film is very enjoyable for them. They are away from their family and together we have a lot of fun making the film. But I always tell them that it is not going to happen again, that cinema only knocks once, then goes away, never to be seen again. But there is a place in filmmaking for them. Sometimes one or two of them take a liking to the making of films, but the rest return to their lives." ---How do you work with the children? Do you draw from their real lives for the stories of your films? "As a matter of fact, in Turtles Can Fly, I once again reconstructed life before the eye of the camera. I asked my actors to live, not act, in front of the camera. Fifty to sixty percent of my films are completed on location. It is while working and living with them that the screenplay draws on their lives and becomes complete in the correct way." ---How did they react when they saw the finished film? "The first time they viewed the film was at the Isfahan International Film Festival for Children and Young Adults. I brought them from Iraq to Iran so they could sit and watch the film in which they had acted. They were constantly staring at my face, or each other’s, maybe for more than half the film. Every few minutes they would also hide under their seats, because they couldn’t believe they were looking at themselves on the big cinema screen!" ---Are you still in touch with the children of your films? Do you know what they do now? "Yes, regularly. I see them three or four times a year, they have become part of my family. The actress who played the character Agrin has moved from the countryside to the city of Suleymanieh, and with the help of some Iraqi Kurds, we have bought her a house. She now works for television and has signed a contract with the Kurdistan TV network for a one hour a month program. The actor in the role of Riga, the blind child, had an eye operation in a Baghdad hospital after the end of the shoot, and he has regained fifty percent of his sight. A house was also bought for him in Kirkuk. With the aid of Abbas Ghazali and Iraqi Kurds, we also bought a house for the boy with the walking stick. Satellite wants to be a filmmaker, and I am helping him achieve his goal by sending him films and books and following his education. And we are lobbying for the boy with no arms who played Hanga to receive an operation and artificial limbs with the help of international organizations." The best memory is that which forgets nothing but injuries. Write kindness in marble and write injuries in dust ---The kids in your films have to grow up quite quickly under very difficult circumstances. How was your own childhood?
two wars, one revolution and a lot of my close friends and relatives killed. At seventeen, I became the head of the family because my father went away. Like the character in A Time for Drunken Horses, Ali, I stood on my own two feet and tried to overcome all of the almost become addicted to it. Even when I am drinking water, I try to make it hard for myself (translator’s note: Drinking water is used in the Persian language when talking of the simplest thing to do). This has become a habit, a way of life." ---Ali tries to support his family by smuggling goods across the border. Did you have to do similar things in order to survive? "This is a daily fact of life in Kurdistan. The choices may vary from person to person, but in the main, this is the way of life. My childhood still exists within me. I have lived the characters that I create for children, and it is as if I have personally gone through what happens to them. I might not have smuggled anything myself but I was responsible for my family for many years and did a lot of excruciating, hard work to provide for them." ---You would agree that your films are a reflection of your own life? "Yes, a lot of the time. There are certain things that have taken shape inside me and I want to display them, if only for myself to see. I want cinema to be a mirror reflecting part of my essence. As far as suffering is concerned, throughout life, some complexes form within our characters, complexes that are related to the childhood that you should have had and that you didn't; the comforts that you should have experienced and that you didn't; the normal life that any child should have and that you didn't. All this turns me into someone who complains. I am angry. I am angry about the pressures of life and I try to portray them in my films. The difficulties in my films are not unrelated to what I have endured in life. These are my problems. Without problems you can't make problematic films. Or you can make them, but no one can believe them. It is the hard life that brings films closer to reality." ---Cinema is not the obvious choice for someone growing up in your surroundings. Why did you decide to become a director? "I don't know why I became a filmmaker. Quite accidentally, I believe, cinema has chosen me. I was brought up in an environment where there wasn't a film academy, there wasn't an archive or any teachers of cinema. And now that I have learned and understood cinema, I would like to use it the best I can, and to realize my opportunity to make films with more focus." ---Did your parents support your cinematic career? "Only my mother. Since I was seventeen, my father has led another life. He wasn't with us. During those few years that my dad was still with us, he had quite an influence on me: in facing the obstacles that he put in front of me, I became quite stubborn. So, unintentionally, he became a good trainer, a good teacher. I believe the first thing that a filmmaker needs is a strong will, and lots of stubbornness and perseverance. That is how my father taught me: through the obstacles that he didn't want me to overcome." ---How did you manage the transition from a difficult childhood in the countryside to being a filmmaker in Tehran? "Well, people journey down some easy and some difficult paths in the course of life and progress. What is important in all this is how we strengthen our will-power to help us get through difficulties. I resisted, I stayed the course, and I moved forward step by step in exhausting circumstances, so that I could achieve my goals. Were I not so goal-oriented, I would probably still be on the margins, living in a small town, without much of a bright horizon for realizing my ideals. But at the same time, don’t forget that ideals are always relative. Today, I face countless difficulties and obstacles making a film, the kind of difficulty compared to which my past problems are nothing." ---You frequently point out the difficulties in getting funding for your projects. "I have never had external monetary support. I make my films from my personal or family wealth. Either they get screened and I get my money back, or I don't." Whatever you sow, you reap ---You are now in the position where you have launched several films and won prizes at important festivals. Do you feel happy with your success and your career? "I don't see any success, and I am not just saying this, it is quite true. Cinema is huge and there are so many ways to succeed. One feels one has not done anything in the time of life that has passed. I am in search of a ‘better’ success, a more ‘proper’ success. I think I have started, but I am always worried about when I am going to achieve real success, of the kind that I can share with my people.
being able to make films under normal conditions with good facilities. That is the first measure. The second is that I can show them in several cinemas in my country. That is the kind of success that I want. I don't understand the success of which you speak. It becomes imperceptible because this other side bothers me so much. I think the fame and glory of filmmaking is passing and not any time. Worst of all, I believe that art cinema – independent cinema – is in retreat, it is sinking, and that the heavy shadow of commercial and Hollywood films are closing every little road that is open to independent cinema. Therefore, I think this kind of success is neither seen nor felt, nor does it last long. The story of cinema is a bit like the story of the discovery of the atom. We could have had hundreds of good uses for it. And it appears that it is just wiping out humanity. And cinema, too, started well but turned into an industry and now it is just a device for gaining capital and making money. You don't find many independent filmmakers who have distributors and markets. Investors and the owners of capital own the art at the moment. To come back to your original question about the media: I complain about the mean, ruthless media such as the likes of the BBC and CNN. When they talk about cinema, they don't even mention independent cinema in their programs. All day and night, they are concerned with the pomp, the glitter of Hollywood films, the empty superstars. I would even go as far as to say that film festivals, like Cannes, are entering this sphere. In a way, they have already, they are almost lost. Even independent festivals are being influenced by commercial Hollywood cinema and by the owners of capital." ---However, speaking of Hollywood, you are planning to work with a famous American actress yourself. "I mentioned that in independent cinema, most roads are closed, there is nowhere to breathe. So every now and then I try to look for ways to find new distribution channels for my films. And one of them is to try to use superstars who already have a market. I want to see if I can use their services without being diverted from my path. I want to continue in the way of my beliefs, saying what I have been saying, but using these people and these conditions to increase the visibility of my films." When will this new film be screened? Can you say something about the story? "I've been after making it for a couple of years, but still don't have funding for it. It is about an American journalist who has been reporting about what is happening in Iraq and who is lost in Baghdad. The film recounts the life of this person in Iraq. It will be the first Iraqi comedy. Well, not really comedy, but the first Iraqi humorous film." ---What is the other project you are currently working on? "It will be an even more autobiographical film about my father and me, when I was young. For that film we have to rebuild the locations from 35 years ago. This is why it will be quite a big project with a relatively large budget. And there are other more practical problems: A gathering of more than 20 people on the streets is illegal. I have to work around this so that we are not arrested! Besides, I am still waiting to be a bit more seasoned, to mature a little in my filmmaking, and to find the means to do it. It will be difficult work. It will be done in my hometown, not in Tehran." In the hour of adversity be not without hope for crystal fain falls from black clouds ---You move from Tehran to the countryside several times a year. How important are these two different worlds for you? "Recently, my life has been divided into three parts: a third outside Iran, a third in Kurdistan where I shoot my films and a third here in Tehran. Tehran is quite unimportant to me. I've come here because cinema happens here. Facilities like film labs and studios can't be found in Kurdistan. Also, with all the letter-writing to the Guidance Ministry and its Cinema Division, part of my work has to be here, the system brings me here. Sadly, everything is centralized in Tehran. I won't say I don't like Tehran – I do like it – but it is polluted, and it gives me headaches and makes me dizzy. When I go to Kurdistan, I feel baptized. Everything is so clean and it is so free from noise and air pollution." ---You described yourself as being very much in touch with your people, which you referred to as being ‘your tribe’. How do you marry this with the very individualistic, personal and creative work of a film director who often lives and works on his own? "First, let me make a slight correction: The forty million Kurds are not so much a tribe as a nation, a people. And for us, cinema is a new art of which we have been deprived for a long time. For this reason, I prefer not to have a personalized or individualistic view of it. I believe art is not for art's sake, art is for people's sake. That is why I want to be amongst people. I want to bring the subjects of my films out of people’s hearts, so that I can make my films for the people. Which necessitates being and living with people." ---You have talked about the harshness of the life in Kurdistan. But you have also talked about the strength and the power that you take from being Kurdish and from coming from this part of the world. What does your heritage mean to you? "The roughness and the difficulty are real. I believe I must make my films in the way Kurdish people live and therefore I endure the problems and hardships. I put up with the lack of facilities and support, be it spiritual, mental or just practical. I make films like my people live. This roughness and difficulty does produce energy. Both the characters in my films and I, in the world of filmmaking, are always fighting, always wrestling to transcend problems and remove obstacles in life, so as to gain hope for a future that is not so unknown. In my cinema, I have exactly the same view." ---You described humour on the one hand and music on the other as important means for the Kurds to deal with problems. Is the medium of film a similar means for you? "Certainly. I am fighting for Kurdish rights with it and am using it to show the suffering of the Kurdish people. Humour and music are indeed weapons that they use so that the suffering doesn't kill them off. At the height of the pain, they make themselves dance to music and smile with humour. This is very much part of our culture." ---However, in Turtles Can Fly, you present death as the only possible option for Agrin, the girl. For the others, there also seems to be no way out, just the option to carry on. Does this represent your own view of life? Is death a relief from suffering? "Yes, in reality it’s so. In a land were there is no guarantee for the future, where you don’t know if even in the next five years you will be living well and in peace of mind – at least to some degree, albeit minimal and relative – death is the best option. From one perspective, the death of Agrin is symbolic of my land that is violated every so often. The killing of that child is, in a way, the destruction of the seeds of rape." ---You use strikingly beautiful and slow images whilst telling very shocking and sad stories. Is that a means to enable the audience to cope with the harshness of your films?
that. If you go to Kurdistan, there are poetic images and beautiful nature and in the heart of it there is deep tragedy. For example, I believe the most beautiful part of the world to be an area in Kurdistan that is almost entirely mined. And this is reality. The good life doesn’t flow through this pretty environment. People are under a lot of pressure, especially in Turkey and Syria – you know that better than me. So I take my camera there and I shoot shocks a little." ---Is the decision to use shock a strategy to gain the attention of the audience? "We are living in an age when there are more than 3,000 films produced annually, and where there are 2,000 to 3,000 satellite channels. People get bored with cinema and TV. What can I do to attract audiences and pull in the crowds under these conditions? I try to choose subjects, people, settings and views that are different so that I can draw audiences that have been lost back to the cinemas. This is a bitter reality, the loss of audiences. I try my best to put all my energy into the making of my films. In a way, to achieve this, the work that I put in becomes a value in itself, so that some audiences might go and watch it out of respect for the suffering that I have endured while making it. It is for them that I endure the suffering." Whatever is in the heart will come up to the tongue ---Is it frustrating for you to be seen as an Iranian filmmaker from the outside while you might rather consider yourself a Kurd? "It makes no difference to me. I am Kurdish, I am an Iranian Kurd. The Kurds are so scattered, but in my head, there is a country of the Kurds. There exists a virtual, a mental country. Not a physical one. Therefore, I would like to think of myself as a Kurdish filmmaker that makes his films for the Kurds. There are many first-class filmmakers in Iran and I don't want to portray myself as separate from this construct, ‘Iranian Cinema’. But within it, I would like to be a Kurdish filmmaker. I am in and from Iranian cinema. But I am a Kurdish filmmaker making films for the Kurds." ---Do you consider yourself a pioneer of Kurdish cinema? "I don't see myself as a pioneer. I see myself as one of the people who are struggling in this sphere. I might be one of the first, but I don't think of myself as a pioneer." ---If you make your films predominantly for Iranians and Kurds, how relevant are western audiences for you? "Whom I address makes little difference. I prefer to make films for my land and my people who have been deprived of cinema for years. There are about 40 million Kurds in Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq and they have something in the region of 15 to 20 cinemas that are 70 to 80 years old. I am trying to revive and rebuild cinemas, as well as the art of cinema. I feel quite lonely in doing that. It feels like one-man combat, or two at most. And it is for this reason that it is important to me that my audience be Iranian and Kurdish." ---So it is not only about making the films themselves but also a matter of providing the necessary infrastructure in these regions to screen them? "I am working on this at present, doing things like buying land, building cinemas and having workshops in Kurdish areas. But I have very little time and energy for this. I try to marry it with my filmmaking. Whenever I can, I complain to rich Iranian or Kurdish people who are ignorant of cultural matters. I have also looked for foundations and organizations abroad to ask them to invest in this country, but to no avail to date. It is quite hard to juggle these issues with my filmmaking. There are a dozen or so of us – friends, brothers and sisters – who have started a movement, a small but high quality movement, I believe, in cinema. For example, I have set up the first Kurdish film company. My aim is to produce one or two Kurdish-language films. But these projects require specialized management skills which I lack. It takes a lot of energy but I can't really let it go because it won't let me go: where will I show my films?" ---Is the idea to create a Kurdish infrastructure that will screen yours and other Kurdish- language films, even if it is not in Iran? In order to circumvent the censorship? "I prefer to show them in Iran, but if I am not given that field in which to play, then my aim will be to create infrastructures in other Kurdish areas." ---In another interview, you said that you worked under the framework provided by the Iranian government. Other filmmakers work differently and get censored after they finish their films. Do you make sure in advance that there will be no censorship? "I strictly and very strongly oppose censorship. But sometimes I am not strong enough to stand up to government censorship. I try to focus my energy on the making of my films and on making them well. If I fight for my films in advance, or during post-production, and if I complain about my films being censored, I will have little energy left to carry on with the next project. I could see myself getting so bogged down in these arguments, for a year or two, that I would not be able to do anything else. But today I am different from the position I just described. From this year on, since the government did not screen Turtles Can Fly properly in this country – they didn't let it run – and since even our stupid TV will not screen films that are Kurdish, I am not prepared to make films within the laws of this nation anymore. I no longer think of the system and of censorship. If I did so heretofore, it was because more than anything else, I wished for my films to be screened for Iranians and for Kurds. I want them to be screened in my land, by my TV. But they have openly announced that my films are not screenable. I am opposed to this. Therefore, I don't value this system anymore. I am now looking for a cinema that conforms to my own rules, not to the laws that say that Kurdish language films are not to be screened. I will make things according to my own beliefs. I will portray what I believe to be the truth, for as long as I am not exiled. I don't mind going to jail for it but I don't want to be sent out of the country." source: mijfilm.com |
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